Maybe Daily Post readers have noticed it? Our cookies are getting smaller? Or else, there’s fewer of them in the package?
While the price stays the same?
They call it ‘shrinkflation’, and it’s making consumers — and national leaders — sad, and angry.
Apparently, even Cookie Monster is feeling blue. (He’s always been blue. But now he’s feeling blue.)
According to an article by reporter Roy Canivel on Inc.com, Cookie Monster proclaimed his displeasure in a social media post on ‘X’.
“Me hate shrinkflation!” Cookie Monster tweeted to his more than 620,000 followers. “Me cookies are getting smaller.”
The post drew responses from big name politicians — Sesame Street fans, apparently — who are likewise disappointed over the grocery store shrink ray.
Even the White House shared Cookie Monster’s post, and offered a Sesame-Street-style comment, focused on The Letter C:
C is for consumers getting ripped off. President Biden is calling on companies to put a stop to shrinkflation.
Three “C” words in a single response. Pretty good, for bureaucratic writing.
There’s also a “C” in “CEO” and in “corporation” — as suggested in this post from Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown:
I’m not sure the American food industry is actually listening to our politicians, or to our TV personalities. Presumably, they listen more closely to their accounting department. They’re sort of caught in the middle, because they’re paying more for ingredients, and packaging, and even salaries. (Especially, CEO salaries.). They have a choice: give the customer smaller helpings, or raise the price.
Which choice would make a customer more likely to skip the purchase altogether?
I think Cookie Monster has answered that question for us. He says he’s going to eat twice as many cookies.
Like most Americans, when he sees the cookies getting smaller, and the packages less full, he complains on social media… and then goes right ahead and buys the cookies anyway.
This is the opposite of good consumerist policy. When you see the cookies disappearing, the correct response is to stop buying them. That sends a message to the CEO. “Hey, not only am I complaining on social media — I’m also not giving you my money.”
Money talks. A lot louder than posts on X.
But there’s another problem with Cookie Monster’s response. (Other than the fact that he has no business getting into politics.)
Smaller cookies are, in fact, the wave of the future. Cookies are made with white sugar, and white sugar is implicated in one of America’s most serious health epidemics: diabetes. By making the cookies smaller, the food industry is actually attempting to address this health crisis.
Smaller cookies, and fewer cookies, mean less white sugar, which means less diabetes.
But Cookie Monster now seems to be encouraging the nation’s children (and politicians) to protest smaller cookies, when they ought to be cheering.
I’m sort of surprised that, while President Biden’s staff has weighed in on this issue, we’ve heard nothing from Donald Trump. With all of Mr. Trump’s recent financial woes, and taking into account his generous physique, I would think he’d want to get his base stirred up about ‘shrinkflation’ in the cookie industry.
Especially knowing that President Biden has allowed this to happen.
How can American become great, if our cookies are small?